


hymn for the exiled

by coffee_counts_as_a_meal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Dissociation, Drug Mention (Spice), Dubious Consent, F/M, No Beta We Die Like Alderaanians, Razor Crest Slander, Shitty Space 1979 Honda Civic Slander, This Is Not A Sweet Girl Fic, slowest of burns, tags to be updated with each chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29349915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_counts_as_a_meal/pseuds/coffee_counts_as_a_meal
Summary: a thousand thousand years pass through me, stoned on loneliness and movies where people make their love in foreign tongues.original female character. longform character study. oc/din djarin. slowburn as fuck.updated on thursdays.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 4





	1. i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: canon-typical violence including mentions of imperialism and colonization through use of force. the main character is a member of an anti-imperial insurgency that is not explicitly based on any real historical examples, but was influenced heavily by research into the irish republican army and the viet cong. 
> 
> also cw in this chapter for heavy dissociation, depression, mention of suicide and some dubious consent (not explicit). 
> 
> if i've missed any warnings, please feel free to let me know and i will fix/update this section asap.

Its a bit terrifying, honestly, how suddenly her life can be divided into Before and After.

There is a constantness to the Before. War is something of a childhood friend on Sorchae, as familiar a presence at her side as Banean and Ji'iri have always been. The losses have a certain pace, a sort of pattern to them that makes the insurgency feel somehow gentler than it actually is.

Neassa learns how to build her first bomb when she is twelve.

It's by accident, really. Banean rips the spare parts out of some droids he had scavenged from a junkyard the Imperials had set up on the eastern edge of their village, and hides them in the forest. There, under his coaxing, Neassa prods and pokes wires into place, fiddles with old power cartridges and timers until it resembles something like what she had seen on old holos from the Clone Wars.

She builds it, but Banean is the one who places it under the Imperial Troop transport, where it kills two Stormtroopers and severely injures another three. More Stormtroopers pour into their village in response, overturning several temples and torching several fields of grassgrain. They are put under strict curfew, some of the elders are taken in for questioning and do not return. Over the next three days, the Stormtroopers throw large, black cloth-swaddled bundles into the sea.

Banean finds her hiding in the western ramparts, sitting on the ground with her back against the wall, shivering with cold and terror. She tells him that she's afraid the gods will be angry with her, that they will punish her for killing those soldiers. That maybe they already have, like they knew already what she would do all along, and that's why her mother is dead and her father an idiot and her baby sister always too cold and too hungry, and somehow this all comes pouring out of her, babbling words and anxieties until she dissolves into tears, her limbs melting in the rain that is always present on the moon that is always present on the moon they call home.

Banean is fifteen, and he is kind, and he is soft when he sits down next to her and gathers her in his arms. Tilts her chin up to look at him, makes sure she sees his eyes when he tells her, _no, sweet girl, you did not kill them._ Her hands built a tool, and that tool was used to protect to their people. If anything, the blood is on his hands, and his hands alone.

Banean has lovely hands. Soft, slender, supple. He knows how to use them, how to gesture and flourish like a conductor, whipping a crowd into an orchestrated frenzy when he talks to them of freedom, of shedding their chains and the shadow of a planet that has oppressed them for millennia. How even before the Empire they still yoked and sweat under the heavy, hungry gaze of the Camians, how the only way forward is to resist and fight back against the enemy oppressors.

He punches a fist in the air, points an accusatory finger towards an unseen enemy, beckons new recruits forward. He becomes a master of the easy charm, the fiery passion that defines a resistance, and their army grows as they do, from children building explosive devices in the shadows of trees to soldiers stocking arms in hidden panels in their huts, forming cells and running messages and intelligence to other units in other villages.

(Neassa comes to know his hands in other ways, too. How her body, in them, transforms him from conductor to musician. How well he plays the notes of her, how she turns from tool to instrument in his grasp. They are both fast learners, and when the losses sometimes seem to accumulate at a pace too fast to bear - Ji'iri's brother, the village baker, Neassa's baby sister, their unit's single veteran commander - the music they make becomes a temporary balm.

"Balms and bombs," she jokes one night, her head resting on his chest and their legs tangled up in his raggedy blankets. "'s all I'm good for."

Banean laughs and kisses her dark hair, running his beautiful fingers along the underside of her arm. "Ji'iri would disagree. You can barely tell burn salve from bantha bile."

"A bit of bad form, isn't it, bringing up other women's names in bed?"

"Stick to training and leave the healing to the pros, sweet girl."

"What do you call this, then?"

"This?" he muses, tracing his way down to grasp her hands, lacing their fingers together. "This is penance."

Neassa hums, but doesn't think to ask him to elaborate, too distracted by the way he goes on to press his lips to each one of her knuckles. Her hands are dry and cracked, blistered from days spent fiddling with explosives, but he takes them like a gift.

Tomorrow, she will build a tool and he will use it to kill twelve soldiers and an elderly civilian Imperial sympathizer who will stand a little too close. Banean will claim the slaughter for his soul alone.

But for now, they listen to the rain beat against the thatched roof of his hut. By morning, it will have turned to a gentle mist, dew on the grass, and Neassa will tread across the green to charm a pot of caf off her neighbor.)

Of course, this is all Before.

* * *

She is unconscious for three days After.

She floats, suspended, in some strange space she cannot name. Cannot even sense, really, other than a feeling of knowing that she should be sensing something. An absence. A wolfish sort of hunger, a longing.

Neassa dreams. A brush of a warm hand against her cheek. A chortling baby laugh. The smell of fresh baked bread and roasted meat. Petrichor, the salt and moss of the sea crashing against the craggy rocks, the shore and sand and water.

Heat. Burning, agonizing, mortifying flame. It wraps around her throat like charcoaled fingers and squeezes. Something so bright and yet so dark, she wants to retreat back into the coolness of the water, the relief of home.

She wakes, gasping, to a dark and humid room. Alone. Aching.

After.

* * *

They tell her that Ji'iri had to practically work miracles; that she had threatened, cajoled, and bribed her way into getting her hands on enough of the precious bacta patches. "As it is," she tells Neassa regrettably, a few hours after she wakes, "you'll regain full mobility, most likely, but some of the scarring will be permanent."

Neassa does not know whether to be grateful or not. Whether to swear a life debt to her oldest and best friend or to curse her for dragging her back to the village, for saving her from the fire she had resigned herself to be consumed by.

It had been human instinct, Ji'iri reasons, that made her turn away as the explosion hit, which explains why her back sustained the most damage. But hair can be regrown, muscles regained. Her hands and face were most spared, miraculously.

"Nea," she says gently, placing a light hand on her wrist. "This is a blessing. Mau the Mother must have been watching over you."

It's like a pinprick, a sharp flash of pain. Neassa jerks her hand away as if burned, even though nothing else has touched her. The movement causes her unused muscles to ache, her back screaming in protest, but she doesn't make a sound. The pain is a good thing. It's what she deserves.

Ji'iri doesn't say anything else, just finishes up her examination and helps her lay back down on the infirmary cot when she's done. Maybe she knows. She doesn't understand, they don't do a lot of that well with each other, but at least identifying the other's mental state has been a constant since they were children.

Children.

Neassa swallows, her throat dry as a bone. She remembers, she turned seventeen two days ago, unconsciously.

Ji'iri doesn't say "happy birthday" as she goes, or offer anything sweet to eat. She organizes a few boxes, lays out some pill bottles on the table next to the cot, and then goes to leave.

She pauses for a moment in the doorway though. An afterthought. A final punchline to throw over her shoulder, a last attempt at some cheer.

"Banean's been asking for you, you know. D'you want to see him?"

Neassa says nothing at all.

* * *

She is released from the medical hut a week and a half later.

Neassa dosn't speak the entire time.

She sleeps quite a bit. Doesn't dream for most of it. When she does, she pushes away the gentle, familiar hands that reach for her. Doesn't let herself wade into the water that beckons, doesn't let it cool her fever, wash away some of the grime she knows has enveloped her like a second skin.

She dreams of transports, of tiny hands pressed against glass. Of a pair of wide eyes meetings hers across a road, the curiosity before the fear and recognition, ignition and flame.

She never wakes up screaming, which is good. She knows people are already whispering about her outside. The drystone huts are not as thick as most people think.

Ji'iri is her most constant visitor, other than a handful of other healers that pop by every now and then to make sure her burns have not become infected, or (as one mutters when he thinks she's already fallen asleep) she hasn't hanged herself from the rafters with her bootlaces.

Ji'iri does not speak of any missions, or mention any part of the resistance. She talks about the community gardens, what season of produce they are in. How the little ones of the village are beginning their lessons in the history of Sorchae, and the young adolescents are preparing for their trials. Sometimes Ji'iri prays in the corner of the medical hut, murmuring praises to the Mother Goddess under her breath, always cheerfully asking if Neassa would like to join before starting.

Neassa doesn't ever accept.

She has her own private prayer, now, an ongoing dialogue with the gods. Mau in particular, she knows, has to be one vengeful bitch. And Neassa doesn't blame Her for that at all.

Her father passes by one afternoon. Or at least, she thinks its her father. Someone had finally told him what had happened, and she hears a bellow that sounds like him just outside the door.

She pulls the blankets over her head and pretends to be asleep while the healers negotiate. Several minutes pass. She tells herself she's not listening for it as she cranes her ears, hearing his footsteps slowly lumber and fade away.

 _Good. That's good,_ she thinks, rolling onto her side, ignoring the way it chafes her burnt skin. She doesn't pull the blankets down, instead lets them press wetly against her mouth as she breathes, out and in and out. _It's better that way._

She leaves as soon as she is declared fit, moves back into her own hut on the edge of the village. She lets the small vegetable plot in the back die. She doesn't leave during the day, only emerging at night to spend hours wandering the ancient ramparts surrounding the village, the forest surrounding the ramparts.

The civilians call her _hoan,_ a living ghost. Her (former) fellow soldiers do not refer to her at all. Perhaps they have been instructed not to. She ponders things like that in the afternoons, watching raindrops race down the transparisteel of her back window for hours on end.

Like when she was in the medical hut, Ji'iri is the only one who makes a point to visit. At least twice a week, practically kicking down the door with an armful of eggs and rice and salt-cured roba belly, cursing under her breath. She clears out the ashes and lights a new fire in Neassa's hearth, cooks enough food to feed an army (which she has plenty of experiencing doing) and forcing the _hoan_ to eat some of it, at the very least. Sometimes with coaxing and pleading, sometimes with the threat of physical injury elsewhere.

Neassa now has the presence of mind to thank her, at the very least. Her voice feels rusty, caked with disuse.

The first time she does so, Ji'iri almost bursts into tears. Instead, she leaves a little earlier that day, swallowing hard and rubbing constantly at her eyes with her knuckles.

Neassa isn't quite sure how many days pass by like this. Weeks, maybe. No one bothers her, that's for certain, until suddenly they do.

* * *

"Sweet girl."

She freezes, arms wrapped around her knees, curled up in the corner of the room. She had been watching a spider migrate up a windowsill, swaying back and forth on its thread. She had been pondering the anatomy of egg sacs, the composition of the silk and the patterns of the web it would someday build. Perhaps she should take up knitting. All her clothes are nearly threadbare.

Neassa does not look up when Banean takes a step into her home, carefully shutting the door behind him. She can feel his eyes on her, searching, appraising. It has been two months since he'd seen her off on the mission he'd assigned, back when it was still Before - or has it been longer? She's lost track of time. Keeping track of the days has not been on the forefront of her mind.

"Nea..." He tries again. " _Stars,_ Nea..."

Something in him shakes. His voice, or maybe his hands. She's not quite sure. They're intrinsically connected in her mind, like the spider and it's spinnerets. Parts of the same whole, used to build and take her apart.

Neassa flinches when he drops to his knees in front of her and gathers in his arms; so, so careful not to bump up against the skin that was once so raw and healing. His lips move next to her ear, soft words that turn to mush in her mind. A part of her wants to struggle out of his grasp, like a butterfly tearing out of its cocoon. Another part of her wishes he would grip tighter, so tight that the bacta-bred patches of skin would bruise, break, bleed.

He does neither of those things. Banean keeps murmuring the same thing, over and over and over again, until the steadiness of it finally permeates the fog in her mind, until suddenly she's reaching out and grabbing hold of his sleeve, staring at nothing.

Nothing matters but the words.

_Sweet girl, you did so well. Fought so hard, I'm so proud of you._

She closes her eyes against the onslaught of images - the transport, the muddy road, the sodden fields in which her unit had laid in wait. The flash in the pan, the fire, seventeen children that were supposed to be Imperial soldiers, the transport was supposed to be full of -

_The Cause needs you, Nea, it needs your hands._

Those hands raised above her head, frantic. Ripping warnings from her throat and hurling them at the roadblock, not caring about the blasters pointed at her chest, or the way the unit had hiding in the grass were staring at her as though she had gone mad.

The seconds, counting down, before the explosion. The last seconds of Before.

_I need your hands, sweet girl._

She does not resist when Banean leads her to the bed. She lets him guide her dry, trembling hands, the ones that the Cause depends on to build their tools. She does not move away when he slants their mouths together, lets him shape her the way he wants. She is so very cold, but his breath is warm as it presses like a fist against the curve of her neck.

The spider has begun spinning its web in the corner where the wall meets the roof instead of the windowsill. Neassa studies it intently over his shoulder - the making of the frame, the spiral threads, the elegant looping back and forth. Perhaps if she cracks open a window and lets the morning mist in, the dew will settle and make it sparkle when the sun decides to rise.

How pretty would that be?

_Pretty girl, sweet girl, my sweet girl, need you by my side. Need you to stand with me. Say you'll stand with me, say it, say you'll come back...tell me you'll stay..._

When it's over, her stays like that for a little while, breathing hard, pressing a sweaty forehead against hers. Neassa does not move from where she's laid, stock still the entire time. She thinks, in some far off, back corner of her mind, that she's acting a bit frigid, a bit withholding, but that corner decays as fast as it is formed, crumbling into dust and fiber.

Banean doesn't notice. He rolls onto his back with a sigh, throwing an arm over his eyes and breathing hard, his body relaxed and content. When he speaks, it's low, almost an afterthought, but rings with sincerity all the same in her too-quiet hut.

"I thought I'd lost you, Nea."

Neassa says nothing.

She idly stretches a hand up towards the ceiling, spreading her fingers and counting the stones between them. Wondering if one day she'll be _hoan_ enough to see through them.

"I still have you, right?" His own fingers tangle in her too-short-now hair, but she doesn't look at him, childhood friend turned soldier turned lover. "You're still here now."

Neassa says nothing still. She doesn't tell him the truth. Instead, she eventually turns her attention from the ceiling to his face, watches as he slowly falls asleep beside her; his breathing evening out, the creases between his eyebrows smoothing into something almost like peace. When she's certain he's out like a light, she reaches over and brushes her knuckle against the cheek of her childhood friend turned soldier, turned lover, turned stranger.

She thinks its the kindest thing she can bring herself to give him right now.

* * *

Before the sun rises over the sea the next morning, she steals out of bed and steals twenty credits out of the pockets of his discarded trousers lying crumpled on the ground. She takes nothing else, says good-bye to no one else but the spider still sleeping in the corner of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waves* hi. this is part of a 50-page document sitting in my drive as a part of a character study for a much much much longer detailed story i have planned. if anyone likes this study and this character enough i just might post the longer version someday.
> 
> also - please don't get mad at me about "sweet girl". i have read rough day. i have a lot of love and respect for rough day. it is the OG. however, i'm fascinated by how the phrase "sweet girl" has entered the fandom lexicon, especially considering that i, a bitch with some pretty heavy trauma (that i have worked through but still knows exists), don't really find it as impactful as i think i should. i wanted to explore what it means to be called that when you know its something you're not - how do the words that other people use to refer to you affect you? this is not meant to show any disrespect to rough day at all (again, i love rough day and the fandom around it) but i also want to make it clear that sweet girl is /not/ who neassa is at /all/, and hence why its so distressing. i'm interested to hear your thoughts!
> 
> no mando in this chapter but trust me :) everything is a set-up. everything means something. if you've read this far congrats you've gotten farther than i ever expected.


	2. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: drug mention (spice is a drug in star wars, right?)

At the spaceport in Sorchae’s capital, she uses the credits to buy some new clothes, something to help her look more like your standard galactic traveler and not a rural insurgent trying to escape off-planet. 

Passing as a civilian requires talking, something she’s been putting off for months. She puts it off longer, forgoing buying a transport ticket to waiting until night falls and lifting one off of a visiting pilot from Jakku with a very loud voice and a very low tolerance for Novanian grog. 

She lets herself get felt up in the alley right next to the pub in exchange for the opportunity to pick the drunk man’s pockets, before grabbing his shoulder and pushing him off her lightly. The pilot stumbles and topples over into the gutter like a newborn fathier, legs shaking, while Neassa leaps over him and takes off running.

She doesn’t stop until she’s several streets away, doubling over and trying to catch her breath. It’s only then that she thinks to study the ticket chip clutched tight in her hand.

Looks like her horny friend had been planning on riding in economy plus. 

Huh. Neat.

* * *

Neassa has never been on a starship before. Has barely ever left her own village, and never, ever, dreamed she’d be someday leaving Sorchae. She’s never had a reason to, when everything and everyone she’s ever loved has been right there, close enough to hold.

She’s never given much thought to what it might be like to be one of those starry-eyed wanderers, forever drifting from system to system, planet to planet in search of adventure. She’s only heard about hyperspace in theory, never thought it’d be something she’d experience for herself.

But now she can’t help herself, pressing her hand up against the viewport, watching the moon she once called home from the outside for the first time. It is smaller than she expected, a soft luminous green forever locked into orbit around the main planet. 

She does not move from her spot, even as the transparisteel grows freezing cold.The transport makes the jump to hyperspace once it’s far enough away from the Camia sector, and the universe explodes into blinding streaks of light. 

It is both frightening and fantastic at the same time, and Neassa thinks that she will never, ever get used to it. Never get tired of it either.

As she watches the stars silently streak by, faster than the speed of light, somehow the heavy knot in her chest slowly begins to loosen.

* * *

The transport takes her to Nar Shadda, a shithole of a moon that she somehow disappears into seamlessly. She finds the place chock full of shantytowns, seedy bars, and even a fighting arena run by Grakkus the Hutt, which serves as the main form of entertainment to the impoverished masses.

Neassa regains enough of her voice and her grasp of Galactic Basic to eke out a living taking bets from the compulsive gamblers who flood the arena stands on a weekly basis to watch imprisoned pirates and Wookies fight to the death. 

It’s a bloody business, but Neassa feels a strange sense of detachment in it. She’s still quiet and observes mostly, but her Basic improves considerably in those weeks, expanding her syntax and vocabulary to debate the finer points of gladiatorial combat. Apparently she has a knack for spotting weakness in competitors, sizing them up off the jump and knowing who’s most likely to be knocked out first. She even manages to pick up a few decent curse words in Gamorrese. 

But a shithole is still a shithole, and once she’s saved up (and stolen) enough credits, she’s packing her meager belongings, turning in the keycard to her shoddy rented room, and hopping on the next transport heading further into the Core.

* * *

So the cycles pass like this. Neassa hops from planet to planet, taking odd jobs at bars and cantinas and diners. She learns how to brew a decent cup of caf and down a shot of tihaar without flinching. She pickpockets tourists, travelers, the occasional Imp if she’s feeling especially bold, and only gets caught twice. Knowing how to run and hide from people who will most likely hurt you if given the chance is a skill she’s had since childhood, so the two times aren’t really a big deal.

She pockets languages as she goes as well, still unable to quite rid herself of that lilting Sorchaean accent whenever she speaks Basic; her “r”s too harsh and her vowels too broad and flat. Huttese comes in handy in the shadier corners of the galaxy, along with Jawaese, and she cobbles together enough of a proficiency in both of them to be able to trade competently. She can understand a little bit of Binary, even if she is still painfully slow to comprehend, but won’t touch any words in Shyriiwook with a ten-foot pole. Her favorite is Cosian; even though she can only repeat a few phrases, the shapes in her mouth, the sound and pitch of them, remind her of birdsong.

She hears whispers about the rebellion; in dusty backrooms, arena crowds, in systems far, far away from the X-wings and rebel spies and captured princesses. The news filters through in bits and pieces - a senator from Chandrila running away and joining the rebellion, a civil war erupting on Mandalore. They say a city on Jedha has been completely obliterated, practically just a smoking crater, that the Empire had used it to test some terrifying new weapon.

Neassa is working at a market, selling golden lichen and surabat grain on Batuu when she hears about the Death Star. At first, she pays it no mind, considers it another part of the myth.The war is no longer as appealing to her as it once was. What does it really matter, in the end? 

“That’s rubbish,” the bounty hunter says, leaning up against her stall and sending a crooked smile in her direction. “You can’t escape it, you know.”

Neassa fixes her with a withering stare. “I can. Why should the Empire care about us all the way out here? Why else are _you_ all the way out here, Pipa?” Words come to her a lot easier, these days. 

Pipa just shakes her head. “You know me, little one. I just can’t stay away.”

She slides a stack of credits across the stall. Neassa glances around the crowded and dusty market street, for show more than anything, before reaching under her table and grabbing a small stained cloth bag. 

Pipa’s grin only widens as she catches the bag in one hand, a flash of pointed teeth. She holds it to her nose and inhales deeply. “And _that’s_ why you’re my favorite.”

Neassa can’t help the slight shiver that runs through her at those words, the way the older woman doesn’t break eye contact the entire time. Even as Pipa stows the packet of spice into one of the many pockets on her long amber coat, her gaze pins Neassa in place and makes her feel very small. 

She sweeps the credits into her pocket, catching the keycard at the bottom of the stack at the very last moment.

* * *

They don’t know each other’s last names. Neassa doesn’t know if Pipa has any family left, where she came from, where she goes when she’s not on Batuu. Pipa never asks about her home planet, and they both prefer it that way. The Outer Rim is where people go to escape, or hide, or just plain disappear. 

_Hoan._ Noun. A living ghost. Neassa has not spoken Sorchaean in years, but certain words still surface like bodies in the waters of her mind. _Ei nlarlai._ Exiled. _Huo._ Shame. _Laigh,_ soldier; _gai,_ girl; _minh,_ body; _siem ho,_ scar. 

She doesn’t like to take her clothes off with the lights on. She never lets Pipa see her back. She thinks of a thousand ways to explain why, in all the languages she knows how, but thankfully Pipa never asks. 

They lie shoulder-to-shoulder in the early mornings, legs tangled together, sunlight filtering in lazily through the curtains in the bounty hunter’s rented room. Pipa’s fingers wound through her hair and Neassa’s cheek pressed against her shoulder. It is something almost like peace. 

“You know,” Pipa muses, once a few sunlit hours have passed. “You’ve certainly grown up from that tiny quiet mouse I found all those months ago.”

Neassa wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Wasn’t quiet. I was _observant._ ”

“Jumpy, you mean.”

“That’s cause you had just body-slammed a grown man and thrown him through two market stalls like a kriffing maniac.” 

“Oh, that’s right,” Pipa tilts her head up, a fond smile playing on her lips at the memory. “Damned bail-jumping Torgruta.”

Neassa huffs, even as Pipa leans in to smooth away her indignant pout with a kiss. “I lost an entire week’s worth of wages that day.”

“Boo hoo. I’ve paid you back since then, wouldn’t you say?” 

“You would have bought the spice either way.”

“Not that, little one.” A mischievous glint, a wink. “In lessons. I’d say what you’ve learned is worth plenty.”

More than she knows, actually. In the months since they started their little arrangement, Neassa’s noticed a change in herself. Not quite the same as she was Before, but she talks more now, actually looks people in the eye when talking or bargaining. On the rare occasion, she’ll even deign to make a joke. She’s more likely to throw out unruly customers, flirt with others in order to get them to buy more shit they don’t really need. 

She smiles a lot more often now. She wonders if it’s something she’s learned just by studying Pipa’s face so often, the planes and angles of it. Pipa’s mouth in particular - soft, plush lips so easily curled into a smirk, or pursed in a pout. 

Pipa’s the one who bought her the first blaster she’s owned since leaving Sorchae. The one who taught her how to throw a punch without breaking her hand and aim for the eyes first in a fight. She tells her that she’s small and quick and how to use that to her advantage, to run and escape enemies that she can’t overcome by force. Pipa takes the hastily cobbled set of skills that Neassa has scraped together over the years and refines them, teaches her how to use the circumstances she finds herself in to her advantage, to get ahead instead of just existing, drifting from planet to planet. 

Oh, and kissing. Pipa is very good at kissing. And teaching kissing. Among other things. 

“Say it again,” she says, once a few more blissful hours have passed. “I like how it sounds when you say it.”

Neassa obliges. “ _Konar’ie._ ” Kiss me.

“Again.”

_“Konar’ie”_

“Again.” It’s barely a murmur, Pipa’s eyelashes brushing against her cheek, soft and gentle and tender like a dream. “For me.”

Neassa hesitates. Just for a moment. Like she already knows. 

_“Oe fonlai’ie._ ” 

Stay.

Stay with me. 

After that is only silence. Pipa turns her head to glance idly out the window, where the shadows are slowly growing and the sun is slowly dimming. This time of year, days on Batuu are short and the nights are achingly cold. 

Neassa can’t tear her eyes away, can’t help but trace the lines of her (friend? lover? stranger?)’s silhouette with her eyes. As if trying to commit it to memory, her outlines of her tiny nose and pointed chin, the way Pipa’s choppy hair falls over her face when she props herself up on an elbow to face her again. 

“It’s happening whether we face it or not,” the bounty hunter says carefully. “The Empire will fall, and I want to be there when it happens.”

“You’re one person, though. If the rebellion wins, it’ll happen, with or without you.”

“All the more reason to go,” Pipa reasons. Not unkindly. “There are some things you just...have to do. There’s no one in the galaxy this war hasn’t touched or taken from. Call me sentimental, but maybe I want to take something back.”

“You’re not sentimental,” Neassa murmurs, blinking several times and reaching for the covers. She pulls them up over her shoulders and turns onto her side, away from Pipa. Stares at the wall by the bed and tries to swallow the lump in her throat. “You’re just...being foolish.”

Cool fingers brush up against her hair, pushing it behind her ear, out of her face as Pipa leans over to press her lips against her temple. Neassa doesn’t move, just lets herself be touched like this, finding it comforting even against the disquieting reality that this might be the last time.

“We could write letters,” Pipa muses after a while, brushing her knuckles up and down Neassa’s arm, almost absentmindedly. “Like in the old tales. Sending you all my love from the stars.”

“...maybe.” 

Neither of them truly believe it. Neassa doesn’t even know what Pipa plans to do once she joins the fighting. Become a trooper? Pilot X-wings? Does she even know how to fly? 

You don’t ask questions like that, living and loving someone in the Outer Rim. How can you even ask yourself if you love them, when you don’t even know their last name?

She feels Pipa nudge her nose against her ear. Whisper in a hoarse, broken tone, heavily accented, _“Konar’ie.”_

When she asks like that, how can Neassa say no?

* * *

She falls asleep in Pipa’s arms, and when she wakes, the bounty hunter is gone.

So _._

_This is what this feels like._

They don’t write letters. 

Instead, Neassa takes what was taught to her and sharpens it into a weapon. She leaves Batuu and starts picking up freelance jobs up and down the Mid and Outer Rim. Sometimes even picks up a bounty from the public Imperial wanted database, turning in people for money. Turns out she’s fairly good at finding people, putting herself in their shoes and finding their weaknesses. The fact that it’s for the Empire is beside the point.

It all doesn’t matter, in the end. Neassa knows this, deep, deep down in her slowly hardening heart.

Pipa never comes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) "Vous pensez que tous les amants ont le sentiment d'inventer quelque chose?" :')
> 
> also no this is not a bury your gays, pipa is alive and well and she definitely made out with cara dune on assignment during the war.
> 
> mando shows up in the chapter next week. whoot whoot. stay safe homies.


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mentions of alcohol, descriptions of canon-typical violence. 
> 
> also warning for razor crest slander bc the only thing i love more than our shitty space 1979 honda civic is making fun of our shitty space 1979 honda civic

She’s been on Corellia for about a month when the news breaks. 

The Galactic Civil War has finally ended.

There’s celebrations on the streets, people pouring from their homes to dance and sing and shout. Every corner on Coronet City is filled with strangers embracing each other, throwing hats in the air, clinking glasses. Down at the shipyards, ecstatic crowds are breaking off pieces of abandoned TIE fighters and Star Destroyers, blowing up what they cannot haul off as souvenirs.

Neassa grabs a drink and cranes her ears to listen to the stories. Names and locations float through the air, some more familiar than others. The Galactic Concordance has been signed, the beloved Rebellion consolidated into the New Republic now. The Imperial Remnant on Jakku are apparently some stubborn little bastards, but they should capitulate any day now. Stormtroopers are about to become the stuff of fairytales, the big bad villains parents will tell their children to scare them to sleep at night.

Neassa sits primly in a corner at the bar, nursing a lukewarm cocktail and watching the various tables through her eyelashes. Over by the window, a pair of smugglers are arguing at the top of their lungs over who knows the most prominent Rebel celebrity personally.

“I’m telling you, he was sitting just as close to me as you are now. Right there, in the flesh.”

“I believes ya, I just don’t believe he did what you says he did.”

“He did, I swear it! Took on Vader himself, just long enough so’s that twink kid from Tatooine could get the shot in and take out the Death Star. The first one, that is.”

“You’re full of bantha shit.”

“ _ You’re _ full of bantha shit.”

“No one could take on Vader and live, not in a ship, at least.”

“Nah, cause that’s the thing, innit? The ship, the ship too, they say he flies a ship that made the Kessel run in thirteen parsecs!”

“So? BoShek’s done that-”

“Yeah, but BoShek did it without cargo-”

“I still say your man’s a lying son of a mudscuffer-”

“You take that back!”

There’s a loud crash, swearing and scuffling. A whoop rises up from the packed cantina, people pushing and shoving each other to get a better look through the crowd gathered around the two smugglers, now wrestling and punching each other on the dirty floor. 

Neassa rolls her eyes and shakes her head, throwing back another swallow of her cocktail without tasting it. She can feel eyes on her, just outside the periphery of her vision. Curiosity, maybe. Everyone is watching someone else on Corellia. It’s not out of the ordinary.

When she turns her head, she makes eye contact with a stranger in orange pilot fatigues, leaning up against the wall across the room. He nurses a glass of bright liquid, barely touched, but obviously bought by someone else. There’s no way a rebel pilot would be allowed to buy his own drink tonight.

A lazy grin spreads across his face at Neassa’s appraising glance, and he takes a slow, languid sip of his drink, tongue darting out to catch a stray drop lingering on his bottom lip. 

He’s not bad-looking, for a rebel, and she knows he wants to fuck her. Most people in places like this cantina do. That’s something she’s learned quickly, easily, and to her advantage.

So without another moment’s consideration, she downs the rest of her drink and slides out of her seat, carefully stepping around the brawl and heading straight for the pilot. She watches his dark eyes watch her, the intentional sway of her hips, the way they’re both sizing each other up. 

He’s looking for a lay, she’s looking for a way off the planet. A perfect match. Neassa knows the count and her own strategy before she’s even reached him, letting her face relax into something open, warm, welcoming. 

“Hey there, flyboy,” she says, helping herself to his drink, making sure to let her fingers brush against his as she lifts it out of his hand. She can feel his eyes (soft, dusky dark brown) follow the line of her throat as she tilts her head back farther than she needs to in order to empty his glass. Horstberry cider, sweet and crisp. Not bad. 

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sets the glass on an empty table, looking back up with a grin. The pilot’s face is blank, but  _ Maker,  _ those eyes are hungry and beautiful, the way they reflect the cantina’s dim flickering lamps, the way she’s sure they’d shine in the moonlight outside. 

“Long live the New Republic,” he murmurs finally, in a low, hoarse voice. 

Neassa tilts her head and quirks an eyebrow, the same way a woman she loved a long time ago once did. 

“Long live the New Republic,” she agrees, letting her fingers trail up his arm, letting this dance begin. 

She says it so convincingly, she almost believes herself this time.

* * *

So it goes. Neassa fights and fucks her way through the galaxy, the end of the war really making no real difference in her life other than Imperial credits suddenly plummeting in value. The rebel pilot she fucks on Corellia flies her across the Core Worlds, teaching her a bit of the basics of piloting a starship as they go, until they get to Hosnian Prime and he’s off to teach the New Republic’s star fleet to do important New Republic things like fly across the galaxy and Not Be the Empire. She doesn’t take it personally when he leaves her at the spaceport without ceremony or even so much as a good-bye. She does, however, take his recommendation that she get more flying experience by also taking his skyhopper and hightailing it across the planet to the nearest auction yard. 

(Okay, so maybe she’s a little more angry than she lets on about being left behind. But he also left the keys with her, so if he didn’t want the skyhopper to be gone when he came back, he should have said so.)

And once again the cycles pass. She passes from planet to plant, picking up languages, skills, lovers. It hits her like a blaster bolt one day, while spending a week shadowing a mechanic on Taris, the realization that it’s almost been nearly a decade since she left Sorchae. Left her childhood, her friends, her family, everything from Before without even so much of a good-bye. 

It’s understandable, she thinks, taking apart the T-14 hyperdrive of an abandoned starship (subsequently ignoring the deep-seated part of her mind that whispers what types of hastily crafted weapons could be built from it) and studying its mechanics. There is no word for good-bye in Sorchaen, only a vague promise of tomorrow.  _ Slan beit,  _ until we meet again, may Mau hold you in the palm of Her hand. Or something like that.

Neassa has not prayed in many, many years. If Mau was to hold her in the palm of Her hand, she can guarantee that the goddess would not hesitate to squeeze and crush her bones to dust. She wouldn’t blame Her. 

It’s not that she doesn’t think about what she’s left behind. She does every day, but at a distance. She remembers the name of the harvest dance they’d perform every fall to pray for good crop, but not the coordinates of her old village. She remembers how the waves sounded crashing on the shore, but not her father’s face. 

When she dreams, it is of Ji’iri’s voice and Banean’s hands, calling her home. But where is home? She misses it, aching like a lost limb. The forest, the sea, the forever rainy skies. Neassa must have seen a thousand oceans, deserts, jungles. So many colors, so much green in the galaxy, but none of it can hold a candle to Sorchae’s wild, misty magic. 

She is so much older now, so different. This woman has learned so much more, her hands have done so much more, she could go back. She could always find a way back. 

Except. She can’t. 

Deep, deep down, in that dark, hurting place that she’s tried so hard to scar over with detached sex and developing skills, she knows this. Knows that a  _ hoan  _ belongs nowhere, that the weight of everything she’s done is a burden she can never be allowed to put down. 

(And really, doesn’t that explain why Pipa left? Because the universe knows, because it told her  _ this can never be yours.  _ Because Neassa wasn’t allowed to keep her, because Mau knows someone with such a stained soul doesn’t deserve anything like softness.

So Neassa hardens her heart instead. She flirts and steals and flies aimlessly through the sectors, taking any job and any distraction she can. The adventures blur into one another, the only consistency being her solitude in each of them. Neassa has taught herself to survive. There is no need for anyone else.

She isn’t allowed anyone else. She tells herself she likes it better that way.)

She spends a couple months on the Core Planet of Calamar, in the Darpa sector, ingratiating herself with the local crime families there. It’s a strangely cushy position she finds herself in, flirting with both the wives of the mobsters and their heads of security. 

In her spare time, she peruses the New Republic bounty database, open to the public for anyone who wants to pick up some extra credits on a slightly dangerous pastime. But really, other than her life, what does she have to lose?

And it’s there she spots it. A price on the head of another bounty hunter. A fantastically high price, considering the target is a member of the prestigious Guild, which has regulations against this sort of thing. No infighting among members. Thankfully, Neassa doesn't consider herself much of a joiner. 

Moreover, the details of  _ this  _ bounty in particular intrigue her. In all of her travels, through the Inner and Outer Rim and even the Unknown Regions, Neassa has never met a Mandalorian. Never thought she would, honestly, after the whispers she had heard of the Great Purge. How the strongest warriors in the galaxy had died like dogs, their planet ravaged and abandoned, how the Empire had done practically everything but set the Death Star upon it, leaving nothing behind but the legend of a destroyed world 

Where did that girl crying on the western ramparts go? Replaced by this bitter, angry creature who barely hesitates to hunt down a survivor of a horrific genocide? Some buried part of her hates herself for it, cries that it could have been her home instead, her people and village razed to the ground. 

_ But it wasn’t. It isn’t.  _

The universe is not good nor kind, and neither is she.

In the end, Neassa takes the assignment, and strategizes accordingly. 

And then suddenly, surprisingly, her life is divided once more. Another Before, another After.

Neassa never sees it coming.

* * *

The story goes how you might think.

Girl meets Mandalorian. Girl shoots at Mandalorian. Mandalorian, understandably, is not happy about it. Mandalorian shoots back. Girl and Mandalorian try to kill each other and nearly succeed. Girl and Mandalorian then find themselves in a tight spot involving the opposing local crime families that Girl has been two-timing this entire time. Girl and Mandalorian get captured in the middle of a turf war.

Girl figures out a way to escape. Mandalorian helps Girl escape. He _saves her life,_ even though at this point he has nothing really to gain from it, but Neassa knows that if he hadn’t immediately shot the gang member who had had her by the jugular, she wouldn’t be running for her life down the streets of Calamar right now. Wouldn’t have this heavily armored bounty hunter hot on her heels, wouldn’t notice him covering her as they weave through alleys and side streets away from the gang snipers and soldiers. 

Girl leads Mandalorian to safety. Somehow, they get out of the city alive. Girl forgives Mandalorian for trying to kill her. The Mandalorian...to be honest, Neassa has no idea whether or not he forgives her for trying to kill him. The man is stoic to a fault, never even taking off that dumb, shiny T-visor helmet the entire time they’re together, so she has no idea what expression he’s making when he gruffly tells her to stay out of trouble, and that he hopes they won’t meet again. 

Which. Isn’t exactly _unfair_ of him to say, but it’s not exactly polite either, and Neassa huffs as he boards his ship and flies away, privately thinking to herself that the legends of Mandalore neglected to mention how these elite warriors apparently traded all sense of humor and joy for their fighting skills.

And she genuinely believes that they will never meet again. The galaxy is an enormous place, after all. 

It’s true that she ends up joining the Bounty Hunter’s Guild on the Mandalorian’s recommendation, having noted that her skill in finding people could be assisted and protected by membership. Still, she chooses to base herself on Carajam, not Nevarro, and chooses to take most of her targets on the Core Planets. There’s no reason to believe their paths will ever cross.

Yet, barely a year passes, and suddenly there’s a change in the air. Her Guild agent, a Twi’lek named Kliry with a wicked left hook and an unmatched passion for scandal, pulls her aside at a drink stall one afternoon.

“Sit, sit down,” Kliry whispers, shifting her eyes from side to side and pushing a cup of caf in Neassa’s direction. “I wanted to tell you before anyone else.”

“I’m so honored,” Neassa says drily, knowing that means she’s told the same story to every hunter she’s met with today. Still, free caf is free caf, and it has been a fairly uneventful morning. She could do with some gossip. “What is it?”

Kliry waits until Neassa’s taken a full scalding sip before launching straight into it. 

“A Mandalorian shot up the guild on Nevarro and escaped with an asset.”

Neassa spits the entire scalding sip of caf clear across the table. 

“ _ What? _ ”

The explanation doesn’t seem to clear it up any better. Apparently all the hunters on Nevarro had been hired by a single client to obtain or kill a target. The reward had been supposedly exuberant, and claimed by none other than the one and only Mandalorian in the Guild.

But after he was paid, for some unfathomable reason, the bounty hunter returned to the client’s facility, stole the target back, and killed anyone who got in his way.

“He’s in the wind now,” Kliry finishes, sitting back in her chair with a smug look. “They say the target’s still with him. Some say it’s a child.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, it sends a chill down Neassa’s spine. 

“A child?” She repeats. “He  _ sold _ a  _ child _ ?”

“Saved a child, depending on how you look at it. Odd, right? Must have had a change of heart.” Kliry narrows her eyes. “Didn’t you say you met him once, Nea? Back before you joined the guild. Wasn’t he the one who convinced you?”

Neassa doesn’t answer, still processing the implications. 

A child. A change of heart. 

How odd indeed. She files through her memories of a year ago, of shooting and ducking and sprinting through the streets of Calamar. He had been impenetrable, both literally and metaphorically, with his full regalia of scavenged armor and firm resolve to speak no more than was absolutely necessary. Even watching him in his apparent element, playing their little game of cat and mouse and then fighting side-by-side against Calamar’s criminal underbelly, Neassa almost wondered if he was somehow a kind of droid, hidden behind all that metal. No wasted movements or words, completely closed off to the world. Cold, efficient. Saving her life, yes, but never speaking of it again. Only responding the same way, like a preprogrammed response, another layer of defense against any questions about anything relating to his life, his past, his goofy-looking helmet. 

_ “This is the Way.” _

A man like that, more droid than flesh and blood, doesn’t have a heart to change. 

Yet, when Neassa closes her eyes and thinks of the second part, a different image comes to mind, unwanted and uncalled for. Large, bright, trusting and hopeful eyes. Round cheeks and gummy smiles, a tiny hand reaching out to wrap around a single finger. The thought of something so small and fragile and easily destroyed does something to her own heart. It steps on it, and suddenly she has to catch her breath, the weight of the insurmountable grief that suddenly slams into her chest. 

_ How do you bury something that still lives inside you? _

“What do you need from me?” She asks instead. 

She is given a bounty puck as an answer, sent off with a “safe travels!” and not much hope behind it.

Somehow, she finds that she doesn’t mind as much anymore.

* * *

This is the Way it goes. 

Girl finds the Mandalorian and his tiny green son. Or rather, she tracks them down to a desolate wasteland of a planet on the Outer Rim. Or rather, she finds the Mandalorian and the tiny alien child he’s taken to carrying around with him everywhere, that he doesn’t outright announce as his son but also refuses to elaborate on what it actually is. And no, the little womp rat does  _ not  _ have a name, but he  _ will  _ put absolutely anything in his mouth that is not nailed down, and, hold on,  _ kid, get out of there, that’s not yours, you don’t know where it’s been and I just gave you a bath -  _

Girl does not do her job as a member of the Guild and does not turn in the Mandalorian and his tiny green son. There just happens to be another bounty on the planet, one with a lower price but a lot less complications, and Neassa tells the Mandalorian that she’ll leave him and his not-son be if they help her bring in the other target. Girl and Mandalorian come to an agreement, and Mandalorian and Girl do not try to kill each other for the time being. 

Instead, Neassa finds that she spends most of her time with them just observing in awe, not quite sure who to be more surprised by. 

Is it the kid, the supposed asset with pointy ears practically bigger than the rest of his body, who hobbles around underfoot, babbling and squealing and causing as much trouble as he can muster for something the size of a small bag of flour? Is it the bounty hunter, who at first glance appears mostly unchanged from a year ago, save for having apparently swapped out his scavenged, scuffed armor for a shiny new set of what looks like pure beskar?

But he  _ is  _ changed, somehow, despite all outward appearances. The more Neassa watches, the more she is struck by it. The dissonance between the gloved hands she’s seen wrapped around people’s throats, raising blasters, ending lives without a moment’s hesitation; those same gloved hands now so gentle and careful, instinctively reaching down to pick up the tiny defenseless creature, fussing with the sack-looking robe the kid wears as a garment, making sure he’s warm. 

She watches them at the trading post (a sparse, sad, nearly empty excuse of a commerce center), using the excuse of having to restock some basic necessities before making the trek back to Carajam to report her failure. But while she bends over tables, sighing over wilted produce, she notes the way the Mandalorian’s helmeted gaze keeps following the child as he totters among the ramshackle stalls. The way his fingers twitch ever so slightly when a stranger approaches, ready to defend at a moment’s notice, but not so overbearing as to frighten or smother the child.

Similarly, she notes in the periphery of her vision the way the kid responds to this protection. Like a rubber band, he wanders down the dusty streets, poking his head into places he shouldn’t, but always drifting back to the Mandalorian when he’s gone too far for comfort. There is a certain wariness in his big bright eyes, a guardedness to his movements even as his curiosity about the universe pours over, too big for his body to contain. When something is too loud, when a local gets too close, when he trips over the hem of his too-big sack-robe and ends up sprawled in the dirt, he comes running back towards the Mandalorian, ears tilted down and crying out soft and kitten-like as he latches onto the bounty hunter’s boot.

And when the Mandalorian barely hesitates to bend down and scoop the child into his arms, that’s when Neassa fully understands.

“You know,” she says carefully in the afternoon, leaning up against the wall of the planet’s only docking bay. “I once spent some time on Nar Shadda, working in the entertainment district.”

“Hmm.” It’s barely an acknowledgement, his attention more focused on his ship and its repairs. The left engine keeps spewing large plumes of smoke for some reason, and he’ll need to patch it up before departing. If it’s even possible to patch up. The Razor Crest is a pre-Imperial piece of _junk_ , to say the least. 

“What the  _ hell _ did you even -”

“Ran into some trouble out in the Arkanis sector. It’s nothing.”

Neassa shakes her head, not even wanting to ask, knowing he wouldn’t tell her if she did. “I spent a lot of time around the arena on Nar Shadda. Watching matches. Taking bets on fights. You know how it goes. I was pretty good at it.”

“Good for you.” 

“ _ ‘Good for you,’” _ Neassa mocks his dry, uninterested tone in a high-pitched whine before she can stop herself. It’s impulsive and childish, and makes her immediately bite her tongue and wish she hadn’t. Over to the side, sitting on a box of spare parts, the little green baby giggles, clearly enjoying this departure from the usual dialogue he gets to witness.

The Mandalorian is not as amused. He straightens from where he had been previously crouched under the engine, an oil-stained hex-clamp clutched in one hand. 

“What’s your point?”

Neassa draws herself to her full height, even knowing it’s still significantly shorter than his own. She has to tilt her head to look him in the eyes (or at least where she assumes his eyes would be behind that stupid tinted visor). She refuses to acknowledge that she’s intimidated by him in any way - not by his size, or the multitudes of weapons strapped to his body, or the fact that he knows how to use them in ways that could end her existence in a second. That hex-clamp included, probably.

No.

Neassa pushes that all aside, tries to summon all her years of knowledge and experience when she says, “Matches were usually to the death. I watched those fighters go in, day after day, and most of the time I could tell you who was going to come out.”

She has his attention now, can see it in the way he notices her gaze drifting over the kid and turns his helmet to follow it. The child doesn’t seem to be bothered by their sudden focus, choosing instead to gnaw on a ration bar with vigor and some surprisingly sharp-looking teeth. 

“You don’t bet on the strongest man,” Neassa continues, speaking slowly and lowering her voice. “Everyone has a weakness. You bet on the one who you know can overcome that weakness, on  _ that  _ day, against  _ that _ opponent.”

“What are you trying to say?” The Mandalorian’s voice practically scrapes against the ground, distorted by the helmet’s modulation, but still deep and vaguely dangerous. “Is that...what, a threat?”

“No.” It isn’t, honestly. Neassa shrugs her shoulders. “A year ago, I would have bet on you any day of the week. But now...”

She trails off, but they both know exactly what she means. 

The Mandalorian glances from the kid back to her. She can feel the weight of his gaze, even without really seeing it, and knows he understands her perfectly.

Neassa still can’t look away from the child. The way his tiny figure makes something in her chest ache. To know the kid for even a few minutes is to already love him, and honestly, she can’t blame the Mandalorian for throwing all caution to the wind and blowing up his life (and half of Nevarro) to protect something so small. 

(As a rule, she doesn’t do kids. Small things. Things that need protecting. As a rule, she tends to avoid those kinds of things, ever since Before became After but now this is something new and she doesn’t understand how something can feel so light and hurt so much at the same time.

And that’s probably why, when the time comes, she doesn’t say good-bye to the Mandalorian or the kid when she leaves on the next transport off-world, new target in hand. There’s no word for ‘good-bye’ in Sorchaean. 

There’s no word for ‘forgiveness’, either.)

And once again, she honestly thinks that’s the end of it, that their futures will forever diverge from this moment on. And Neassa hopes that they make it, she really does, but a part of her is relieved because honestly, some things are better left buried. 

She’s gone this long without having to think so much, without having to feel so much. Just because the Mandalorian’s decided to grow a heart suddenly doesn’t mean she has to, and that’s the end of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) :) :) that's not the end of that. 
> 
> a lot of action is intentionally vague bc this is a character study and not an actual story but anyway if you want deetz let me know bc the real long story is in the works


End file.
